[MichaelZuo]

Why does the opinion of any ‘side’ outweigh the opinions of any other ‘side’, beyond the ballot box?

Seems more sensible to just assume they all negate each other out in the long run, unless proven otherwise by voting records.

[Retric]

Politics is tricky because non wealthy very much support the wealthy politically. Agree or disagree it’s just reality in modern politics.

As for why we shouldn’t actually care abstractly there simply aren’t that many ultra wealthy. Any subsidies given to them just cost an incredible amount relative to the number of people helped etc. They also don’t directly matter in terms of broad metrics like human health, lifespan, happiness etc.

[MichaelZuo]

How does this relate to my comment? Did you intend to reply to the other comment?

[Retric]

You brought up politics in relation to different economic class.

My point was how we treat ultra wealthy as a political issue is independent from the underlying reality. They aren’t directly outvoting poor people to revive more benefits, it’s instead a question of influence.

Billionaires tend to see positive ROI from getting involved in politics, which is self reinforcing over time. But, stepping back you can judge such systems not in terms of current politics parties operate, but in the broader context of how efficient systems are. In that context the ROI is negative for society even if it can be positive for some individuals that comes at significant cost.

[MichaelZuo]

Huh? A ‘side’ doesn’t imply an ‘economic class’?

Many millions of people can genuinely believe in something, be on a ‘side’, while being spread across the entire economic spectrum.

At best it can be said to be an ideological differentiation, not an economic differentiation.

[Retric]

> A ‘side’ doesn’t imply an ‘economic class’?

It does when the side described was the edges of a distribution.

> wealth distribution, on the one side we have the super and hyper-rich

Replace a few words and:

> height distribution, on the one side we have the tall and hyper-tall

PS: To be clear the political interests of a group exist even if the group doesn’t map to a specified political party or ideology. Groups have specific interests independent of which other stances they take. We don’t think of short people in political terms, but there would be a real outrage if gas stations put their credit card readers 7 feet off the ground.

[MichaelZuo]

HN users can write anything they want, but that doesn’t automatically imply what they wrote is credible or must be assumed to be true for all subsequent replies…

Hence why I wrote ‘side’ in quotation marks, because I didn’t fully agree with the original parent comment’s characterization.

e.g. HN user 1 can say X part of the population is on the ‘side’ of the moon being made of blue cheese and Y part is on the ‘side’ of the moon being made of cheddar cheese. But future replies by HN user 2 and user 3 are free to treat that as all meaningless gibberish.